Inhaltsangabe

The final volume in Richard J. Evans's masterly trilogy on the history of Nazi Germany traces the rise and fall of German military might, the mobilization of a "people's community" to serve a war of conquest, and Hitler's campaign of racial subjugation and genocide. Already hailed as "a masterpiece" (William Grimes in The New York Times) and "the most comprehensive history... of the Third Reich" (Ian Kershaw), this epic trilogy reaches its terrifying climax in this volume.

Evans interweaves a broad narrative of the war's progress with viscerally affecting personal testimony from a wide range of people - from generals to front-line soldiers, from Hitler Youth activists to middle-class housewives. The Third Reich at War lays bare the dynamics of a nation more deeply immersed in war than any society before or since.

Fresh insights into the conflict's great events are here, from the invasion of Poland to the Battle of Stalingrad to Hitler's suicide in the bunker. But just as important is the re-creation of the daily experience of ordinary Germans in wartime, staggering under pressure from Allied bombing and their own government's mounting demands upon them. At the center of the book is the Nazi extermination of Europe's Jews, set in the context of Hitler's genocidal plans for the racial restructuring of Europe.

Blending narrative, description, and analysis, The Third Reich at War creates an engrossing picture - at once sweeping and precise - of a society rushing headlong to self-destruction and taking much of Europe with it. It is the culmination of a historical masterwork that will remain the most authoritative work on Nazi Germany for years to come.

Kritikerstimmen

"Masterful....Evans demonstrates a fluent style and a sweeping grasp of the Third Reich's history and of the enormous historical literature....Evans narrates the Reich's end in gripping fashion as the Allies closed in on Germany. Evans's fellow historians as well as a broader public will listen to this work, not quite with pleasure, for there is little joy in this story, but with admiration for the author's narrative powers." (Publisher's Weekly)

Many others have written over the war, and each have their strengths and weaknesses. This book gathers a multitude of events, memories, and contemporary writings that depict a cruel and terrible tragedy. Detailed, almost punctillious, this collection of historical events and vignettes confers a clear outline of the crimes of the Third Reich. The author tells the story of the Second World War as a long succession of separate acts taking place on the different levels of German society. He spends relatively less time on Hitler, some time of his immediate coterie of followers, and a great deal of time on all of the ramifications of the war time on German society. There are far too many anecdotes to repeat in a review, but it is worth mentioning how the author somehow unearths and repeats what the popular jokes were in Germany during the different years of the war, and how these indicate the shifting mood of the German populace as the regime began to lose credibility. Evans deserves great credit for gathering together such a long, rich, detailed collection of incidents that so clearly depict a nation in the grip of totalitarian rule.